jr_dunson has asked for the
wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hey, I hope I posted this to the right place.
Just wanted to ask if you have any recommendations for the best perl editor.
I've used Notetab Light for years, but was wanting to see what other use. Notetab is free,,,and I can open many documents at once, and even build snippet libraries (i.e., reusable code libraries).
I've thought of Ecclipse IDE, but there's little Perl support...
Any other suggestions?
You can email me offline at: jarrell_dunson@asburyseminary.edu.
Thanks ahead of time.
Jarrell

This question comes up from time to time, so there are already quite a few responses archived away on the dusty shelves of the Monastery. You can use Super Search (or Google) to find them. For example, I used Super Search to find nodes that contained "editor" and found these two right away (both written about 1 month ago) (search results):

I have grown rather attached to Vim. It runs on all three environments I routinely use (Solaris/FreeBSD UNIX, Linux and two different Windows variants). I can set up the same macros and hot-keys in all three environments, so I don't have to remember where I am working on at the moment, just open and edit.

++
You can add on snippets, syntax coloring, et al. Really lightweight solution, loads quickly etc. Of course, it is not an IDE, so no debugger. ActiveState Komodo has a good debugger and you can use it for both Perl and Python.
Tobin

Wow. I was just writing a message like "TextPad is dead, don't use it", but I've checked the site and it looks like they've released v5 after all these years :p I wonder what new features (if any) it has...
Btw, I recommend Komodo.

I bought a license for TextEdit 4 a few years back, but although it is fast and nice to have around, I never really loved it. I also switched to OSX at home recentlty and haven't really found a text editor I like, though JEdit comes closest. It is cross-platform and has a few useful plugins for perl, but it works best with a big screen. My MacBook's screen isn't really big enough for it if you a lot of plugins.

How can you feel when you're made of steel? I am made of steel. I am the Robot Tourist.Robot Tourist, by Ten Benson

You can try the EPIC plugin for Eclipse. It adds Perl support. It's pretty good, have been using it for the last few weeks. Not as feature rich as the Java stuff, but lots of nice things (e.g. it picks up syntax errors immediately, and I have developed a heavy reliance on the "outline" to jump around functions/methods within a file).

Windows or Linux? I've used PSPad on Windows. If you're still interested in Eclipse (with EPIC), there may be a talk on it at this year's YAPC::NA. We're announcing the schedule on April 30th, so you might check the YAPC::NA 2007 site then.

I always plug nedit when this question comes up. It is easy to use and has a small footprint compared to something like Emacs yet it has enough power to be useful. It has syntax highlighting for many languages and reasonable macro functionality. Especially useful is dragging over text with the middle mouse button (it underscores rather than highlights) and that text is pasted to the cursor position (or over text that has been selected with the left button) as soon as the middle button is released. It can also use regular expressions in Find and Replace operations, including captures (accessed via \1 etc. rather than $1).

It is available for most *nix platforms and will also run under Cygwin by all accounts.

Now, I'm prejudiced. I was a big-spender (v 4.95, US$20 then; v5.2, US$30 now) and went for the "pro" version...and I'm also staying in (loose) touch with their folks, from whom came the news that they'll soon (for some unknown value of "soon") upgrade NoteTab's current (PCRE version 7) regex support to a full Perl version.

NoteTab already offers a great set of "clips" (plugins/modules/libs, if you prefer one of those labels), including one that will give you syntax highlighting. It's lightweight and quick.

So would I recommend anything different? No, not unless an integrated debugger is critical.

You have quite a list of choices in responses above this node, but FWIW, remember, for some time at least, changing editors will involve climbing the learning curve, so "best for you" may still be what you're already familiar with.